


falling for your hallelujah

by whiskeyinthejar



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Homeless, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-09
Updated: 2013-08-09
Packaged: 2017-12-22 22:57:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/918994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyinthejar/pseuds/whiskeyinthejar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a homeless boy who's made his new place outside Louis's work. Louis, in unexpected generosity, offers him a cup of coffee and a sprinkle doughnut.<br/>No one really expected it to become a Thing.</p><p>-</p><p>(In which Louis works in a cafe, Harry has no home, and it's freezing cold but no one cares).</p>
            </blockquote>





	falling for your hallelujah

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to dedicate this to [Han](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/larrypls), for being lovely and giving me the inspiration for this, and putting up with me despite my procrastination- I hope you like your character!
> 
> As before, kudos and comments are the reason I shed literal tears on to my keyboard.
> 
> Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All characters and events should be in no way associated with any person, and I do not profit from or intend to offend.
> 
> Also if some of you have noticed (I don't know if anyone wants to read this again or whatever) but the word count has increased a little because I am never satisfied and add things on to my works instead of revising, oh dear.

Day One: Coffee (milk, no sugar) and a sprinkle doughnut

There’s an order to Louis’s morning that never goes uninterrupted. Mostly, he runs the mornings on autopilot, because each action has been performed meticulously until there’re all ingrained into his schedule, the same as sunrise and sundown. Seeing as he does this so well, he’d probably be able to wake up later and carry on smoothly with his morning (even though that would be an awful interruption to his timetable), but he never does. So, the manager of the little coffee shop where he works decided that as Louis always popped up to work at least half an hour before he really needs to be there –precisely, it’s usually forty three minutes, depending on the traffic-, he could open up shop for him. Louis accepted, even though it wasn’t technically in his job description, and Louis’s all for technicality, but there’s only so many times you can wipe the same tables before you have to grudgingly accept that there aren’t any spots left on them.

But today, there’s something wrong with the picture. Not the kind of thing that’s really going to impact on Louis’s timescale, because he doesn’t even have to acknowledge it, if he wanted.

There’s someone in a sleeping bag outside the shop, curled up and face buried into the material and ears hidden until a knitted hat, right by the front window, under the yellow shade (Louis’s not really sure what the actual name is of the things shops have overhanging over the front, and he can’t abide not knowing, so he pencils a reminder in his mind to look it up). The someone, the nearer Louis gets to him, is making soft snores that would probably be louder if not snuffled by the navy fabric, and Louis clutches at the edges of his jacket forcefully, as though the guy is actually a sleeping lion who might pounce suddenly and wrestle it off him. ‘We’re edging into winter,’ Louis thinks, trying to produce an explanation for the movement of his limbs, ‘I’d be quite desperate for a coat too’. Louis clearly doesn’t think about how his first instinct wasn’t to actually _protect_ the jacket, but to give it to the bloke, because obviously this interruption is beginning to bend his mind after all.

Louis doesn’t cope well with interruptions, and he’s already wasted a minute just bloody staring, so he unlocks the cafe, steps (albeit quietly) through the door and slips ins

The rest of his morning runs like clockwork.

His mind isn’t so organized, however. Whenever his thoughts hit a lull in conversation, they drift back to the figure outside, who must’ve woken up by now, what with the heavy footed customers trampling through. It’s not as though this is the first homeless person Louis’s seen, they’re all over London, but this one seems to have needled right into his head.

“Where’s the real Louis Tomlinson?” Asks Han dryly, as Louis blinks heavily and asks the customer to repeat their order (this is not the first time it’s happened this morning, but it’s most definitely the first time it’s happened twice in a row).

“Bunch of goddamn aliens came down and decided I was the perfect example of humanity, so took me away to make me their God.” Louis replies, bending around her to put a cup under the coffee machine (two shots coffee, one shot caramel, and milk but no sugar, and Louis _knows_ this, he does, because the same woman with the flyaway hair and dazed eyes orders it every morning.

“It’s always the aliens.” Han says, shaking her head slightly in indignation. Louis notices her golden name badge is crooked on her black shirt, but Louis’s used to noticing these things. He could tell her that her glasses are beginning to slip down her nose (but they do that every day) and that a few strands of hair have been missed out when she pulled it up into a ponytail (but she always misses a few out) and there are a few small dust mote-size flakes of mascara that have floated down from the morning’s wear and tear under her eye (but there always are). Louis notices these things, but he doesn’t mention it.

“Here you go. That’ll be £1.50.” He tells the woman waiting at the counter absently, staring past her to look at the shape bundled up outside the window.

“Met our newest addition?” Queries Han, following the direction of his stare and peering closely through large frame glasses.

“Not personally, no.” Says Louis, sighing.

It’s not like they’ve spoken. Louis’s just having a bad morning (a Jonah day, his mother used to say, because his mother was fond of biblical references).

By the time break comes around at twelve, Louis’s always glad for the chance to sit down. Today, because the whole day seems to be running in the same strain, he can’t sit still. All of his necessary limbs and organs (and even the unnecessary ones) seem to be infected with a desire for movement when he’s tired enough to want to fall back asleep in the staff section, and none of this is on.

“Be back in a minute.” He tells Han, who hums. Louis is confident that she didn’t even hear him, because she’s staring at her phone like the literal word of God just appeared on it and has told her that He has chosen her to do His work. (Louis checked once, for mere curiosity, to see what was so unfathomably interesting, and was rewarded with a conversation that was something about pork).

Back in the front of the cafe, he stands stock still for a moment, because he hadn’t really produced a plan as to what he was going to do when he got out here. He just knew he had to get out.

“Well, you did that, genius.” He tells himself, and one of the customers across the room, who’s reading the paper and sitting at a table alone, looks up, gives a cursory glance around, before going back to an article that proclaims itself to detail all the facts of Simon Cowell’s love life.

Louis’s made it to the counter before he stops again, and he looks at the display case to his left. It’s been artfully arranged so that the customer can see the shop’s selection of culinary delights as they order their drink, and Louis has to admit they’re pretty good (despite being a complete wanker, their baker can actually make delicious cakes when he’s asked).

And then, and Louis blames this on the way that this whole day has just been falling through the cracks completely, Louis acts upon a whim, takes out a large mug and fills it with (uninteresting) ordinary coffee, and stirs it quickly whilst trying to extricate a doughnut from the case. The barista on duty, who’s only been here a week and Louis keeps asking his name before promptly forgetting it, looks at him like he’s just jumped up on the counter and is performing a ballet routine. Louis supposes the two kind of equal, really, because Louis doesn’t do unexpected (neither does he do ballet).

The doughnut is prised free eventually, golden and covered in white icing and sprinkles, and Louis holds it carefully, because icing-sticky fingers are no way to make a good first impression. Also, the coffee cup is beginning to burn his hand, and if he didn’t have such spectacular muscle control he’d probably have scattered brown liquid and shards of white ceramic all over the floor.

He shoulders the door open slowly, edging out even slower. Louis’s arms erupt into small bumps, the hairs sticking up, and it’s cold enough that when he breathes out, it’s shown in white curls (like smoke, but purer).

Louis’s walked up right beside the someone and he’s still unnoticed, because the someone is still wrapped up in their sleeping bag, grey hat pulled down to below his ears (Louis is also very glad that it is a him, because if it was a her and he’d jumped to the conclusion that she was, in fact, a he, it could’ve made for an awkward encounter).

“Hello.” Louis says, softly, but there’s no response. “Hello.” He repeats, louder, poking the figure with the toe of his shoe for added emphasis.

This time, there’s movement. A head appears out of the folds of the sleeping bag, blinking rapidly and eyes flicking around.

“Hello.” Louis says, for the third time running, and the person turns their head to look up at Louis, squinting his eyes because Louis has his back to the sun.  
He's young, really fucking young. Not much more than a kid; and his cheeks are stinging red with the wind (because it's a curse, in winter, always sharp as whipcracks and twice a fierce). Louis might be staring. Perhaps a little, and he's never been all that great at subtlety. The boy -and that's what he is, no way of edging around that, Louis might as well pack him up and send him back to school- keeps his lips pressed together. Going for the strong and silent look, maybe; or he's too polite to hiss obscenities at the bastard that woke him up.

“I, uh, I brought you coffee. Milk, no sugar. I don’t know how you like your coffee. Obviously. Because we’ve never met. I shouldn’t be starting a sentence with because. And a doughnut, because I didn’t know if you’d be hungry. I hope you are. Well, obviously, I don’t hope you’re lying out here starving, I’m not that much of a bad person, but just eat it and stop me talking, please.” Louis finishes, handing out the two items like they’re burning him (one, of course, literally is).

There’s a good point and a bad point, then. The good point is that the boy does take the proffered coffee-and-doughnut, and the bad being that he stays mute. Louis blames his incessant rambling when he doesn’t really know what to say (hence why he doesn’t like to talk to people he doesn’t know) (actually, Louis doesn’t really like talking to people).

“You’re welcome.” Louis says, and he tries not to say it pointedly, but he did bring the things out here without being asked, and he’s probably lost the use of his left hand forevermore, and he thinks he kind of sounds like a whiny git right now but his hand really, really, fucking hurts.

The boy looks up silently, both his hands wrapped around the coffee mug and the doughnut resting in his lap, blowing white puffs of air onto the surface of the coffee, making ripples. His stare is kind of vocal, for a half squint against the glare of a winter sun, and Louis thinks it says thank you.

Louis’s break only lasts quarter of an hour, and he probably needs to eat lunch or something, because that’s what his schedule dictates that he should do, but he also needs to wait for the coffee cup to come back (that’s not the only reason, but Louis can’t, and won’t, think about how he’s still involved in a no-holds-barred staring contest with a homeless boy who’s picked up outside his coffee shop).

“I’m Louis.” He tells the boy, who takes a sip of the coffee. He’s obviously got some kind of magical coffee drinking superpower, because he doesn’t see any sign that he’s burnt his tongue, and life is really fucking unfair sometimes.

It’s really cold, the kind that’s all knives digging through the thin layers of skin and piercing your muscles, and Louis can hear his teeth chattering as loudly as he can feel his body shaking with the sporadic shivers.

“Gotta be cold at night.” Louis says, and he’s going to start talking non-stop again, he can sense it coming, but it’s not often he finds himself in a situation where the other partaker (kind of) of the conversation is completely voiceless, and Louis doesn’t know how to act in social situations. “You know, just in a sleeping bag. Really cold. Like, buried in the snow in the Arctic cold. Not that I know. Never slept out here, not really my thing. I mean, it’s probably not your thing either, it’s probably not anyone’s thing, but I’d probably end up trying to sneak into McDonald’s or something.”

The boy looks at him wordlessly, and takes a bite of the doughnut, poking out the tip of his tongue to snare the bite before his teeth come down, and Louis thinks it’s fascinating, so he watches him (which is creepy, and mild-stalking, because no one likes being watched as they eat, but he’s never seen someone eat that way and everything about this boy is drawing Louis in like a fish on a line).

“Good chef. I say good chef, he’s really a prick, but he’s very good at baking. Once I went into the kitchen and literally _threw a mug at my head._ Isn’t that assault?  I think that’s assault. Do you like the doughnut?” Louis asks suddenly, narrowing his eyes and staring at Harry –as though he hadn’t already been, but his gaze intensified, if that’s possible. Maybe he went from creep to maniac.

As if in reply (and maybe it is, Louis doesn’t know, he doesn’t speak the language of silence), the boy takes another bite, and swipes his tongue across the pad of his thumb when he’s eaten it all to catch any crumbs.

Louis’s break is nearly over now, and the boy holds out the mug. As Louis takes it from him, their fingers brush, and the boy’s fingers are cold.

“You’re welcome.” Louis says softly, bending down so they’re at eye level, and he thinks they’ve reached an understanding. Not that Louis is privy to what that understanding is, but it’s been reached. All Louis knows is he wants to wipe away the fears that chill this boy’s skin, but he doesn’t understand that at all.

“Where’ve you been all this time? Out conversing with the aliens?” Han asks from the counter, standing by the till, and Louis drops an exaggerated wink.

“They wanted to know how my plan for world domination was going.”

“Oh, really? What did you tell them?” Louis reaches the counter and moves to put the cup into the dishwasher, before remembering it’s in the back room.

“Splendidly. You’ll all be dead by next Tuesday.” He tells her, reaching out with his index finger to prop her glasses up more firmly onto her nose, and goes to find a place in their washer for another cup.

“In all seriousness,” Begins Han, as she sorts out a chai latte for one of the more fancily inclined customers, “Where did you go? Not like you to screw up your lunch break.”

Like it’s all been organized by a higher power, Louis’s stomach takes this moment to deliver a rousing rumble.

“I was out.” He tells her, trying for haughty. He probably succeeds, because Louis can do haughty very well.

“And you never thought to eat while you were out?” She asks, holding the latte on it’s little plate in front of her midriff, and Louis shakes his head benignly.

“Eating is for humans.” He says, and turns to greet the man with the shock of white hair who just walked through the door.

When Louis leaves the coffee shop at the end of his shift, there’s no one in the niche outside under the shade, and Louis’s irrefutably disappointed.

“Must’ve gone back home.” He murmurs, and carries on walking down the path that takes him home.

*

Day Two: Coffee (milk, no sugar) and an orange and spices muffin

The next day, which is a Friday, because important changes to schedule never come on a Monday, Louis’s rota is running normally until he sees there’s a boy-shaped figure under a navy sleeping bag, and he stops at the doorway of the cafe. He wonders whether he should wake him, and demand answers (namely: why are you camped outside my work, who are you, why do I care so much about these questions anyway), but he doesn’t. Louis lets sleeping lions lie.

Louis sets up shop methodically, placing the chairs under the tables and pushing them in, turning on the lights and the heating and all the electronic machines. The case of bakery sweets need restocking, and Louis needs to make sure the chilled drinks cabinet is full, even though no one really wants a nice, cool water in weather like this.

As Louis wipes down the table tops this morning, he thinks of lips that were meant to smile, and resolves he’ll see it before he dies or he’s failed himself, and Louis does not take kindly to failure.

When Louis’s break comes today, it seems like the seconds he’s been working have slid forward so slowly that each one must’ve been a minute at least. In fact, he doesn’t feel time has passed this slowly since his last day of school, and the excitement beginning to bubble in Louis’s veins feels more immediate than that ghost of a memory.

He fills up a cup with coffee, not sure if he should change anything, but deciding to keep it the same. Not everyone wants to be forced to swallow down vanilla caramel hazelnut coffee with foam, although the woman with the neatly parted brown hair and round cheeks seems to have no difficulty in doing so.  
Louis observes the bakery section he stocked earlier, and thinks about which one he’ll take today. Baby steps, after all, are the way things get changed. In the end, Louis decides on an orange and spice muffin, because they’re really all sorts of delicious, and takes the same walk back to the front door, with his hand still burning on the smooth surface of a coffee cup.

“Hello.” Louis says, even though the boy is awake today and looking directly at him with his stare that seems to speak when his mouth doesn’t. “I didn’t bring a doughnut today, but you’ve got a muffin. Orange and spice. Sounds weird, I know, but really, it’s great. What’s the saying? Don’t knock it until you try it, or something like that. Anyway-” Louis says, thrusting both the coffee (and very nearly spilling the near boiling contents over an innocent boy) and the muffin towards the boy, “These are for you.”

Louis watches him again, because the boy is beautiful, and people are supposed to look at beautiful things, and admire. So Louis does. He admires from a distance the way the boy blinks when he looks up, like there’s a permanent source of light in front of him, and how his hands move so slowly, so languidly, like there’s nothing coming next except another second, admires how the rim of his knitted hat is pushed down right over his forehead, close enough for the fibres to almost touch his eyelids, and how his nostrils flare when he takes a tentative bite of the muffin. The boy’s cheeks are kissed pinker with cold, like a gift from winter, and his nose is too, and his mouth stretches ridiculously wide when he pulls the food into his mouth.  
Louis is of a mind that this is one of the only distractions he’s willing to abide.

When Louis comes in from the cold, tip of his nose stinging with the bitter air, Han raises her eyebrows. Louis isn’t sure whether he’s supposed to defend his actions or not, so he shrugs.

“Feeding the homeless. You’re sweet, Louis.” Han says, smiling, and Louis pokes his tongue out.

“Good person does all he can, that kind of thing.” Louis tells her, walking past to fight once more with the perpetually crowded dishwasher.

“I thought you said that was all bullshit?” She calls from the front, and Louis snickers because if the manager finds out she’s freely swearing all around the shop front there’ll be trouble.

“Doesn’t mean I can’t do my bit.” He says, coming back out (with sweat on his brow and blood oozing from his various wounds sustained during the great battle of Louis versus the Dishwasher) and taking his place by the till.

“Didn’t know aliens were in to that sort of thing.” Han comments. Her hair is falling out of the band, and she’s tucked the stray ones behind her ear.

“We’re actually very nice sentient beings, once you get past the bloodthirsty let’s kill all the humans and take over their planet sort of thing.” Louis reveals, eyes scanning over the room. It’s gone past lunchtime now, so the custom has tapered off a dramatic degree. If Louis was a better person, he’d feel sorry for the guy who does have to do the quarter hour that he and Han are on break, because that’s peak time for them (his name is Liam, Louis’s found out, and he’s determined to remember that), but Louis is frankly just glad that he doesn’t have to do it himself.

Sometimes, Louis would like to know exactly _what_ Liam thinks of his and Han’s conversations, because he never comments on it. Perhaps, one day, he’ll be bundled up in a van after work one day and Louis’ll know that Liam’s only gone and got him committed.

“You believe me, don’t you Liam?” Louis asks him beseechingly, and Liam fumbles the cup he’s holding and nearly drops it on the floor.

“We-ell, you don’t really strike me as monster.” Liam says, a little cautiously, and Han laughs from her position by the coffee machine.

“Of course I don’t.” Louis replies soothingly (and with a condescending smile for added effect). “That’s because I’m a genuinely lovely person.”

“You’re all talk, but I bet you’d slice us both up in our beds.” Shoots in Han, and Liam’s eyes widen comically. Perhaps he should have a heart to heart later or something, because one more person thinking Louis is ripe for committal could end in him actually being admitted into a psychiatric ward (or prison).

“I don’t even know where you live, smart ass.”

“A beautiful palace upon a hill, waited on hand and foot by my devoted servants. Naturally.”

Louis nods sombrely, pursing his lips. “And we all know I live in a spaceship, report back for duty every night et cetera. What about you, Liam?”

Seeing as how Liam seems to be in a perpetual state of wonder as to how this conversation is even happening (especially as Louis has definitely asked what his name is five times at _least_ ), he manages to form an answer relatively quickly.

“Buckingham Palace, of course. Haven’t you noticed my upper-class, truly royal attitude?”

“Oh, no doubt you’re in line to the throne.” Louis agrees, as Han delivers a group of drinks to one of the tables.

“Going to be King one day, mark my words.”

Through the streaked and frosted glass, because no matter how many times Louis cleans that window it always seems to acquire a certain layer of grime throughout the day, Louis can still see the outline of his (he’s not really sure if two cups of coffee, a sprinkle doughnut and a muffin really count as solidifying a friendship) ‘friend’, still with the same, thick hat pulled right down over his face.

“I think you’d be a great King, Liam.”

“King Liam. I like the sound of that.”

And Louis thinks that even though this conversation somehow turned from his being a misunderstood being from outer space to his co-worker’s ruling of their country, he can add someone else to his pitifully short list of friends (because routines don’t allow for new friendships).  
Louis keeps looking out through the shop window, into the street with it’s wintry air that numb fingers and noses, and right to the shape propped up against the glass.

His schedule seems to be falling apart recently, anyway.

*

Day Three: A hot chocolate and a banana and chocolate muffin (topped with rich cocoa frosting)

“I think I talk too much.” Louis says, in complete solemnity, as the boy takes baby nibbles of his muffin. Louis heard once that the more bites you take, and the longer you chew something, the more filling it seems. Obviously they both hear the same things. “Like, I don’t even know your name, and all I do is talk to you. I don’t stop. I’m even talking _now._ Obviously it’s your choice if you wanna talk or not, but I think I ramble. I know I ramble. Oh God, I’m rambling about rambling, who even knew that was possible. That’s like protesting against protesting, or something.”

When Louis leaves for work, dead on the dot of five like every other day (just like clockwork, the girls and boys come out to play), the boy is gone, and that’s like usual. Louis spares his cursory glance towards the place where he sleeps, and there’s a small sheet stuck onto the glass.

This, Louis decides, is probably something that requires further inspection, so he steps towards the note. His heart rate picks up, and he doesn’t know why (or even why he noticed, really) in time with his pace, so he tries to slow both. Only one of them does.  
By the time Louis’s crouched down in front of it, he can see that it’s a small yellow square, and he thinks they’re called post-it notes. Maybe.  
He should probably ask his boy just how he came to acquire a stationary supply when he’s sleeping in a bag outside a coffee shop every night, but he knows he won’t get an answer.

There’s a single line written on in looping writing, so different to Louis’s scrawl. It looks like it belongs on an old-age parchment sheet, or something. Louis peels it off the glass, gently, so as not to leave a mark on the window, and tucks it inside his jacket pocket, and begins his walk home with measured strides. The air around him feels like it’s flaying the skin off of his face, so he keeps his hands buried inside his pocket too, the fingers on his right hand curling around thin paper.

_I like it when you talk._

*

Day Four: Caramel latte and a homemade peaches and cream cupcake

Louis’s taken a risk today, because this one is one he made himself and brought in. He was going to have it for lunch, before remembering that he’d been skipping his lunch at it’s designated lunch time to give food to the kid outside; so really, it seemed fitting that he should have it.

“It’s a caramel latte today. I hope you like that, because I think they’re great. Not that I’d be overly upset if you didn’t like it, because it’s not like I’d suddenly stop coming out here. What am I even talking about?”

The boy looks up at Louis with unfathomable eyes, so wide and bright that Louis wonders he isn’t blinded, really, and takes a small sip.  
And there must be the winds of change in the air today, because then he smiles, all soft and warm like autumn sunlight and falling in love, and Louis was right all along. It illuminates him, this simple curve of lips, scrunching up his eyes and rounding his cheeks. In this moment, Louis thinks he’s beautiful, more than beautiful, _incandescent._

By the time the next second has ticked over and all this has flown through Louis’s mind, the smile has disappeared like the sun has floated behind a blanket of cloud (but Louis knows it was there).

“Did you like it?” Asks Louis, even though he knows the boy (he should probably come up for a nickname for him, or something, but that sounds a lot too difficult) wouldn’t have smiled if he didn’t.  
There’s no reply, but Louis is getting used to that.

“I made the cake myself, by the way. In case it’s horrible, or something, because I haven’t tried one yet and I don’t want to poison my flatmates. I do sometimes, though, but not today. Cake would be a good way to go, though, if you had to. Died whilst eating cake. Oh, sorry, I’m probably putting you off. Why don’t you push me in the road, or something?”

If Louis was a good reader of eyes, he’d say those of his ‘maybe-friend’ are laughing.

“How’s your friend today?” Asks Han when he comes inside, hairs on his arms raised and slightly (terribly) shivering.

“Do I detect a certain hint of jealousy, my dearest, one and only, truest of all friends?”

She laughs, pressing the button to pour shots of coffee into a cup, back to him. “Of course, the green eyes monster has his claws firmly inside me.”

“Perhaps you should see a GP about that. It sounds uncomfortable.” Louis tells her solemnly, turning to take the order of a woman flanked by three kids.

As seems to be typical with family groups, they all try to order the same thing, being in this case; one large coffee (for the mother, he hopes), one medium coffee and two hot chocolates. What Louis loves about this coffee shop is that there’s no pre putting of the milk and sugar in, because there’s little pots of milk given with the coffee and sachets of sugar on the table. In all honesty, why people expect him to know just the exact size of ‘splash of milk’ they want, he’ll never know.

“It’s very serious. It involves desiring a friendship with you. I need this sorted out as quickly as possible.”

“And I thought it was love between us.” Louis moans, pressing the button for the hot chocolate and watching the clear glass fill up with liquid brown.

“I’ll love you until I find a better replacement.” He’s told, and if Han thinks that’s some kind of placation she’s obviously not very skilled at social interaction (not that Louis is either, but at least he knows the rudimentals).

“You could never replace me. You love me too much.”

“If that’s what helps you sleep at night, Louis.”

In fact, what does help Louis sleep at night is two sleeping pills, because insomnia is one demon that can’t be killed without some sort of outside interference, and much as Louis would love to think that chewing on honeycomb or whatever else is going to send him off like a weary baby, trial and experience proves otherwise.

“You look awful.” Niall tells him that night (he’s munching happily on one of the peaches and cream cupcakes that Louis made, and maybe the boy outside wasn’t just being polite).

“Yeah, like you haven’t slept since Jesus walked the earth.” Adds Zayn, sprawling out over the three seater sofa on his front. It’s grey with multicoloured cushions, because they all brought cushions from home when they moved and didn’t think how patchwork it would look (the same goes for their plates, cutlery and glasses).

“You’re not even _Christian._ ” Louis says, raising his hands and trying to leave, which is a lot harder than you’d think when someone’s sat on your lap. “God, Niall, I could cradle overweight elephants that weigh less than-”

“Flattery will get you everywhere.” Interrupts Niall smoothly, settling back so that Louis’s face is smushed into Niall’s shirt. It smells like spices, and if Zayn’s thinks he’s going to order in a takeaway for lunch every day simply because Louis isn’t there and he thinks he can get away with it- well, he’d be crafty, and Louis admires it.

“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, Louis.” Zayn says serenely, voice muffled by the many cushions, and Louis considers throwing one of his own at Zayn’s head.

“Sorry, Pope Zayn. You know I’ve accepted you as my Lord and Saviour.”

“Exactly as it should be. Even if, as you so artfully pointed out, I’m not Christian. So I’d probably be a terrible Pope. And the Pope can’t be your Lord and Saviour, the Lord and Saviour speaks through the Pope. I think.”

“I’m so lost.” Niall says smoothly, settling more comfortably on Louis’s lap.

“Oh, fuck off and go to sleep, you little shit.” Louis grumbles, trying to push a persistent Niall off his lap.

“Mother should’ve washed your mouth out, Louis.” Niall says, and Louis’ll be damned if he isn’t gleeful.

 “Wanker.” Is all Louis says, and Niall laughs so hard that he falls right off of him and falls on to his cake, smearing white buttercream over his forehead.  
Then it’s Louis’s turn to laugh.

Later, when it’s dark and the shadows and shapes look so much more sinister than what they are in the day, Louis waits for sleep to come with ease. It’s reticent in coming forwards, from little wisps to full frontal falling.  
Louis thinks of that small flicker of time earlier today, of pink pink lips and delicate smiles.

Somewhere in that dreamy near sleep, he decides that falling asleep is not the hardest kind of falling.

*

Day Nine: Gingerbread latte and a lemon cupcake

Without realising it, this boy outside has filled himself in to Louis’s schedule so seamlessly it was as though he’d always been there. Louis knows this isn’t so, because Louis’s only known him nine days.

“Our master baker has outdone himself.” Observes Louis, on the pile of piped yellow icing on top of the sponge. “Also, I’m not sure if gingerbread and lemon really go that well, but it’s the only latte you haven’t had and I thought we might as well push them all out of the way before we start something else. Like coffees. But not espressos, espressos are shit, they’re like two millilitres of coffee, no one wants that. Unless you want that?”

There’s no reply (if there was one, Louis would probably have fallen over) so he continues.

“By the way, our coffee machine exploded at home. Flat? Not sure if home is here or home home, like with my family. Anyway, who knows what Niall was doing to it, because me and Zayn were sleeping like all other good folk, and then there’s a bang and we rush in our weary bones, to find him standing there, dripping boiling coffee. Our fridge, oven and walls will never be so sparkling clean as they once were.”

The way the kid uses his tongue to swipe of the icing before he bites into the cake is proving to be a real distraction. It’s not like Louis’s a teenager anymore, he’s twenty three (and should probably work somewhere other in life, but the cafe pays well) and this shouldn’t be getting to him. But it does. And just because Louis borders on creepy, he watches him scoop a little of the icing on the tip of his tongue before it darts back in, and somehow there’s a dot of it on his nose, and it’s too cold for Louis to be thinking straight.

“Maybe I should bring you something more. It’s not like you have other food.” Louis stares at the boy for a space of four seconds, and blinks. “Was that rude? I think that was rude. Oh, bollocks, I didn’t mean it. I was trying to be sensitive.”

Louis wasn’t sure what kind of reaction he was expecting, but the person sitting beside him carries on licking at the icing stoically.

“I guess you don’t mind. I’m sorry, if it counts.”

As Louis walks back to the front door of the coffee shop with the cup clasped in both hands, he almost thinks he misheard. But the street’s empty, because it’s during work hours, and Louis doesn’t imagine things (not often, anyway).  
He turns back so they’re face to face again, him and this boy who’s made his home on the street.

“Harry.”

“Louis.” He replies, louder than the other boy, but gently.

There’s no other words said, and it’s like something has clicked into place. It’s a small something, if you look at the whole masterpiece, but it’s a start.

Louis taps the tips of his fingers against the china, and walks back inside.

*

Day Ten: Cappuccino and a slice of carrot cake

There’s always something melancholy about cutting the first slice of cake , Louis reflects, as he does exactly that. The cake is soft, the knife sliding through like it’s just thick air, and the white buttercream leaves smears on the silver of the knife. On the top of the cake are twelve imitation carrots, pipes of orange and green.

It’s getting colder, if anything, the nearer they draw to February. You’d think it’d be the opposite, but weather seems to have a mind of it’s own in Britain (and that mind prefers rain and chills).  
The cup holding the cappuccino sends off tendrils of soft steam as he steps outside, spinning up until they fade into the sky.

 “It’s a cappuccino today. I warned you we’d be moving on from lattes.” Louis announces, and the figure he’s (well, looming) standing over pokes it’s head up and blinks blearily. “There’s a good lad. Harry.” He adds the last word on, tacking it to the end of his sentence.  
They both pretend the name flowed with the rest.

Hands shaking slightly with the unexpected cold and the manager’s decision to keep with the short sleeved shirts, despite the temperatures being sub zero and the door letting in a blast of frosted air every time it opened, Louis hands over the cup and the slice of cake, lying sideways on the plate.

“It’s carrot cake, if you like that. I know some people don’t. Zayn won’t touch the stuff, but I like it, because it’s kinda spicy and kinda _bakey_ , if you get what I mean.”

Sometimes, Louis thinks that the only reason that he never gets any replies is because the boy’s woolly hat is too thick over his ears, and he can’t hear a word Louis is saying at all.

Louis watches Harry lift the fork lying on the plate gingerly, and stab a piece of the cake, pulling it from the rest and lifting it to his mouth. Harry pauses, though, with the prongs of the metal tapping on his lip, and looks up at Louis (and Louis still hasn’t forgotten his desire to be able to read eyes, because Harry’s are so wonderfully deep that they seem to give off so many words at once).

“Sorry, sorry.” Murmurs Louis, face heating even in the air. “I watch people, I’m a creep, sorry.”

He’s not sure whether it’s a good or bad thing that Harry smiles around the piece of cake, and still smiles as he chews, mouth stretched wide and making pronounced the sides of his cheeks.

“We ordered a replacement for the coffee machine.” Louis says, staring at the tops of his shoes and the way they’ve been scuffed by dragging them along the rough surface of the pavement too many times. “Niall has to pay. He tried to work around it, because he’s a lazy bastard, but we pinned him. He broke it, he can pay for it, you know?” Louis’s not sure Harry would know, because Harry doesn’t have a home so he probably doesn’t have a coffee machine either.

“I tried to make a pie, and I didn’t even think pie was that hard, not when you just roll a sheet of pastry over a dish of apples or whatever, but I managed to burn it all. I even cracked the dish, and I swear it was fine when it went in the oven. Perhaps our kitchen is cursed. Maybe we have a _kitchen poltergeist._ ”

“Is there such a thing?” Replies a voice, low and husky, and Louis doesn’t dare to look up from the lines on his shoes. It’s like the child’s belief that things are only ever real if they can’t see them (and that’s a whole new level of _Inception_ ).

“There has to be. A single kitchen can’t have a run of luck that bad. I mean, first the coffee machine, and then the whole pie fiasco. By the time I get back, the fridge door will’ve fallen off. You just mark my words.”

“I will.” Says the voice again, and Louis thinks how different it is in comparison to his face that’s all cherubic youth. This is a man’s voice, and that’s a boy’s face (no matter how lovely).

For one of the irregular times in his life, Louis doesn’t know what to say. “Tomlinson.” He says, and waits for a reply.

One doesn’t come until he’s walking towards the door, placing one foot in front of the other and watching the ground carefully for black ice (this city is a death trap).

“Styles.”

“See you tomorrow, Harry Styles.” Louis calls, pushing open the door and flitting inside.

When Louis’s depositing the plate and cup inside the dishwasher, which seems suspiciously empty today and is no doubt a sign that something somewhere is very wrong indeed, Liam speaks up from his elbow.

“Who’s the kid?” He asks, and Louis has a brief surge of irritation, because Liam himself can’t be much more than a kid, anyway. He manages to quell it by reminding himself it’s a turn of phrase, and smiles at Liam.

“Runaway, I guess. He doesn’t say much, but I give him a coffee and a cake every day.”

“Why?” Liam asks, and he has these big brown eyes that probably should no longer be this large now that he’s hit puberty. He looks like a bushbaby, for God’s sake.

“Dead people outside is terrible advertisement.” Cracks Louis, before sighing at Liam’s now even wider eyes. His past self was right, he really needed to have a friendly talk with Liam about what was and wasn’t liable to joke about. “I dunno, Liam. It felt right at the time. You know, if I ran off to a big city by myself, I’d be bloody thankful for anything kind anyone did.”

Louis’s got an uncomfortable feeling that Liam’s looking at him with respect. Not that respect is a bad thing, necessarily, if it’s given to the right people, but Louis isn’t sure he himself is one of the right people.

“I never really thought about it before.” Liam says, most likely pondering the deep inner questions of life, and flashes him a wide beam.

“There goes one happy little boy.” Says Louis, watching Liam retreat back to the shop front, and pretends to wipe a tear with his tea towel.

“Who’s a happy little boy, Louise?” Asks someone else, and Louis is beginning to see a pattern where people seem to enjoy talking to him more when they’re not actually looking at him.

“Don’t call me Louise, you bitch. And is there something terribly off-putting about my face today?” He replies, turning towards Han and pulling the most grotesque face he can manage, pursing up his lips and widening his eyes dramatically.

“No, I think you’re sexy as always.” She tells him good naturedly. “But I hope the wind changes and you stay like that.” Maybe not so good natured, then.

“Like I said, you’re such a bitch.”

“And you’re my bitch. Such is the circle of life.”

Louis throws his tea towel in her face, because childish tactics will serve you for the rest of your life, and runs off to serve the couple that just walked in through the door.

*

Day Sixteen: Americano and a chocolate dipped flapjack

“God, it’s bitter today.” Louis says, wrapping his arms around himself. He can hear his teeth chattering, the noise reverberating inside his skull, and he wonders how Harry bears it at nights. Perhaps he’s part polar bear, or something. “Are you part polar bear?”

Harry rewards this witticism with a single raised eyebrow and a sip of coffee, and Louis still doesn’t know how he manages to drink boiling coffee and not shrivel up his tongue in the process.

“For God’s sake, I can hear you shiver from here. It’s pathetic.” Harry says after what must have been hours (it’s been twenty seven seconds) has passed. He pulls something out from inside of the sleeping bag, and Louis stares at him suspiciously until it’s revealed to be a grey fleece blanket that Harry drapes over the top of his sleeping bag and holds up one corner invitingly.

Louis should think this through, really, because Harry could’ve been patiently waiting for this chance to knife him in the side and steal all his money (which is a grand total of zero, on his person) but that blanket looks warmer than where he’s standing, so he crosses over to Harry and sinks down thankfully, left hand making sure the side of the blanket doesn’t move up and uncover him.

“Thanks.” He manages to mutter out, through his spasming jaw. His body is a traitor. “D’you know it’s been over two weeks since we’ve known each other?” Louis announces, and Harry sighs. Louis wouldn’t put it past him to begin ignoring him again.

“You told me it was our ‘anniversary’,” he even mimes the little quotation marks, the little fuck, “two days ago.”

“You might’ve forgotten.” Says Louis comfortably, leaning over to sniff appreciatively at the coffee. “Good it’s strong on a day like this.”

“I thought the coffee was for me?” Harry asks, elbowing Louis gently in the side, and Louis makes a big fuss of pretending to be mortally wounded. To his chagrin, Harry seems unperturbed, and carries on sipping at his coffee.

“I would never steal it from you.” Louis promises, blowing out a heavy breath and trying to still his body’s shakes. It’s a futile exercise, but it makes him feel better (kind of).

“Don’t you own a jumper?” Asks Harry snidely, and Louis thinks privately that that’s a bit much coming from the one without a home.

“You want to be mean, find another generous coffee giver.” He warns Harry. Breathing in deeply, he can smell the coffee and the flapjack and cold, fresh air. Frankly, he’d thought (perhaps unfairly) that Harry would have the stereotypical grime and stench of someone who hasn’t bathed in, well, at least in sixteen days. “How do you keep so clean? Not be rude, or anything, I’m just interested. Unless you have a bath in that sleeping bag. Or a shower. I’m partial to a shower, too. Why don’t you ever just shut me up?” He implores Harry at the end, who gives a small smile.

“Didn’t you get my note?” Harry queries, and Louis thinks of the creased then smoothed out piece of paper lying on his bedside table. _I like it when you talk._

“Maybe I talk too much.”

“Maybe I talk too little.” Harry responds, nibbling at a corner of the flapjack. “And for the first question.” He sighs deeply, and Louis wishes he’d never brought it up. It’s probably like rubbing salt in an open cut to watch it sting. “There’s a public toilets down the street. No one ever remembers to lock it up at night, so I go in there. I did remember a sponge.” Harry jokes at the end, but Louis’s looking down the street. He knows the place, a dingy white painting building front that could possibly fall down at any second. It stinks of piss and alcohol and the floor’s littered with shattered glass. Who knew Louis was in to the paternal instincts?

“Don’t go in there.” Louis says suddenly, twisting so they’re face to face, and they’re probably a lot too close, noses only an inch apart. He can count the individual eyelashes on Harry’s right eyes, see the strands of gold and blue inside the green of his irises. He’s wasting away out here, but he’s still beautiful, just dimmed. “It’s not safe. You could get murdered, or something.”

“What’s one less bugger off the streets then?” Laughs Harry, and it’s black without humour.

“Don’t.” Snaps Louis, and one of them should move apart but neither of them do.

“Don’t do what?”

“Make yourself. Make yourself so small, insignificant. You’re much more than that.”

“I won’t make any promises, Louis. I can’t.”

Harry’s eyes look away first, eyelashes looking down, splaying over the flesh of his cheeks. It would be so easy, so wonderfully easy, for Louis to just reach forward his hand and tilt Harry’s head up, make him look Louis in the eye.

Instead, Louis extricates himself from Harry’s blanket, taking the cup with him. He looks back when he reaches the door, and Harry’s staring after him.

This time, it’s Louis who breaks the hold.

*

Day Eighteen: Tea and a white chocolate and raspberry muffin

“I’ve decided it’s become that stage in our budding relationship that we talk about each other and find out some more interesting facts.” Louis says into the air, because Harry’s tucking into that muffin like he hasn’t seen food since dinosaurs roamed the earth, and that’s a far shot from the usual conservational approach Harry uses deploys. “Steady on, it’s not running away.”

“Mmf.” Harry says, and Louis nods as though what Harry just choked out was the single wisest sentence he ever heard.

“I agree completely. Yes, of course. Mm. Exactly what I was going to say. When did you become so _eloquent_?”

Harry narrows his eyes, and Louis laughs into the fibres of the fleece.

“What I was trying to say, before you so uncouthly interrupted me, was that I missed my Salvation Army meeting, so I didn’t get dinner yesterday.”

And suddenly, it’s not funny anymore.

“Oh, God, Harry, d’you want me to go get some more food or something I could get soup, it’s warm isn’t that what they give at those meetings? What do you want we’ve just got a delivery in yesterday-”

Day Eighteen becomes infamous in Louis’s mind for the first (and the only) time that Harry interrupts him.

“I’m fine, Louis. Fine now, fine earlier. Just- just don’t fuss. Ramble, if it helps you forget.”

“You can’t just tell someone to ramble, Harry, it’s not a circus skill, I can’t perform it on demand. I’ve got to be in the flow to ramble, so the nonsense can run free and. Don’t think that’s working on me.”

“It worked pretty well.” Snickers Harry, swallowing a gulp of the tea.

“If you really want to distract me, we’re doing the get-to-know each other.” Presses Louis, settling himself more comfortably (on the nevertheless freezing) concrete floor.

“Okay, okay. You go first, because you ramble so much I know everything about you anyway.” Says Harry sweetly, and Louis pokes his tongue out at him.

“So. Where d’you hail from, weary traveller, because that is no London patois.” Louis may not be good at much, seeing as how he didn’t bother to further his education and picked up sticks across the country and chose to work in a bakery instead of getting a more steady job, but he can tell an accent, and he’s grown pretty used to picking apart the London ones.

“Cheshire.” Harry says, like his mouth is moving too slowly for his words to fall out, as though the words are physical shapes that have gotten stuck on his tongue. “Little village. You?”

“Doncaster.” Louis says, and Harry nods.

“Knew it. You’re not the only accent buff around here, Louis.” Louis loves that way Harry says his name, drawing out the syllables and the tip of a pink tongue peeking out from behind his teeth.

“And I thought I was something special. How you do rip me apart.”

Harry grins, showing teeth and making visible the little dent in his cheek. It’s been eighteen days, and he’s still glorious, still coruscate.

“Full name.” Harry says, and Louis thought they were asking questions here, not stating facts.

“Louis William Tomlinson.” He replies promptly, and watches Harry test out the names, mouthing them silently into the winter air to test how they run together.

“I like it.” Harry proclaims, and Louis breathes an exaggerated sigh of relief. “No need to be a drama queen. Harry Edward Styles, how lovely to meet you, how funny to see you in these parts, and so on.”

“Harry Edward Styles from unknown small village in Cheshire, what else can I ask? How about- what’s with the hat?”

Harry jumps, hands flying up to pull on the wool, and Louis nearly snorts (he smothers it though, because it was only a few days ago that Harry never talked at all and he doesn’t want any of that floating away).

“What about my hat?”

“I’ve never seen it short of covering your eyes. You hiding a shock of green hair or something? Medusa style snakes protruding from your head?”

Shaking his head, Louis catches a glimpse of the beginnings of a smile before it drops off Harry’s face.

“Nothing under here but my hair, I’m afraid. If you’re looking for something more interesting, there’s a guy at the Salvation Army who swears that his wig is made out of his-”

“I would really rather not know, thanks.” Cuts in Louis, flapping his hand  in front of Harry’s face in an effort to stem the tide. “What I’m interested in is your hair, specifically. Not some weird guy at the SA.”

He can’t be sure, but Louis thinks there’s a flash of “Why me specifically” across Harry’s face that’s quickly masked.

“If you really insist.” Mutters Harry, and Louis sits back and watches as Harry removes the hat with fingers that only tremble a little, and Louis knows that’s from the cold, because his own are turning red and bloated as they speak.

“And that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Louis asks, leaning forward to catch Harry’s eye. Harry purses his lips.

Louis isn’t sure what he was expecting, but it’s surprisingly normal. Harry can call himself the proud (or not so proud, seemingly) owner of a thick head of brown hair that curls into near ringlets around his ears. It’s lank, but Louis thinks he can excuse Harry that, seeing as he doesn’t actually own a shower, or a bath, or maybe not even shampoo –which, as Louis comes to think of it, seems all the more likely as he assesses the situation inside his own head.

“Nothing to worry about.” He adds, and Harry makes this nose that’s like the lovechild of a sigh and a snort before jamming the hat back down on his head, covering any hint of hair, even more so than before, and Louis remembers seeing stray hairs the first time they met, definitely.

“My turn.” Harry says, and Louis nods graciously because there is no way he’s dropping this subject in the long run, but he’ll allow Harry his supposed freedom. “Favourite kids’ names.” Harry says, looking at Louis with those _eyes_ , and they’re just so _earnest_ , like all he needs is another push before he declares himself the legendary do-gooder and walks around everywhere pulling down cats from trees and helping little girls up from where they’re fallen down. Louis, in comparison, looks like a bitter, mild asocial with a disorder where he cannot shut the fuck up.

“I- I,” begins Louis, biting down on his lower lip and trying to dredge up some names from his mind. It’s as though the Stare of Earnestness has, out of the blue, torn his memory to shreds.  “Victoria and Albert.”

“You think you’re funny.” Harry says, giving him a ‘Look’ and Louis tries his best to either; puff himself up and say yes, he is funny, or shrink into himself until he blinks right out of existence.

“What are yours, then?”

“Nicholas and Niamh.” Responds Harry and Louis squints in puzzlement because Harry’s planned out child names but not any other aspect of his life.

“Fond of the letter N, are we?”

“It’s a perfectly good letter.” Harry says haughtily, and Louis grins.

“Alright, calm it. Next question... How did you end up here?”

This is the one where Louis thinks he’s pushed too far, bent the metal so far back it can no longer be put back into place. Harry’s schooled his face into a hard cover, but there are cracks, and through those bleed the Harry that Louis knows, who’s frightened, terrified, and still beautiful.

“I’ll plead the fifth on that one.” Harry says at last, at eventual last, pushing out the words as though they’re very heavy weights. Louis grasps on to it with relief like a drowning man grasps at a buoy, the olive branch keeping him afloat.

“Isn’t pleading the fifth an American law?”

“Shouldn’t you be inside, O Smart one?” Replies Harry, and Louis sighs. Without his realising, and entirely without his intent, outside with Harry has become his safe place.

“This investigation has been adjourned. We will continue tomorrow.” Louis says, prising the cup from Harry’s lax grasp and managing to make himself vertical with two feet on the pavement.

“Is that a very legal way of saying goodbye?” Questions Harry, head tilted ever so slightly at an angle. Louis was wrong; when Harry pushed the hat back down earlier, he didn’t lose all the hair. He’d missed a couple of curls that hang either side of Harry’s face.

“Of course it is.” Says Louis, pushing open the door. When he looks up from the till later, Harry and his navy sleeping have both disappeared (it gives Louis a very good idea as to what question he should ask tomorrow).

*

Day Nineteen: Mocha and a ginger cupcake (complete with ginger icing and crystallised stem ginger pieces)

“Do not fear, the light of your life has arrived.” Louis says, walking backwards out of the cafe door and nearly falling into a pedestrian woman who looks less than pleased to see him. “That was lucky. Nearly spilled this down my shirt.”

“Your shirt is black.” Harry points out, voice soft and quiet like a much loved jumper worn by a fireside on a snowy night.

“Even in black, you can see the slightly, uh, _blacker_ places. Like stains.”

“Woah. Didn’t know working in a coffee shop was such an enlightening cultural experience.” Says Harry in mock reverence, and Louis inclines his head regally.

“Of course you couldn’t. Those of us selected to work here and hand picked from _the_ best universities.” Louis replies, handing over the cup and the cupcake, shaking his hands in the chilly empty spaces left before scooting under the blanket next to Harry. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten. We’re carrying on our investigation into each other’s lives, beginning promptly.”

“Mugh-fgg.” Says Harry, because he is brilliant and possibly genius, with a mouth full of cake.

“As of yesterday, you should have the next question, but- I’m not really nice enough to pass up this opportunity.” Louis says, reaching his index finger forward to swipe the tip in over the white icing, bringing it back up to his mouth. Narrowed eyes, Harry watches the path Louis’s finger makes, pulling the cake closer to him so the action can’t be repeated.

“Fire away.” Is all he says. His nose is pink tipped with the cold, almost as pink as his lips (which are chapped).

“Okay.” Begins Louis, before huffing out a sigh. The question and answer thing is a lot harder, really, when you’ve been put on the spot. “Favourite colour?”

“Blue.” Harry responds, staring at Louis intently, and Louis is still a little unnerved by the intensity of Harry’s gaze, sometimes (a lot of the time). It’s as though he’s trying to peel away all of Louis’s skin and bone and muscle until he can see right into his soul –Louis doesn’t need to do this, because Harry is an open book, when he isn’t avoiding the question.

“And mine’s red.” Says Louis happily, wrapping the blanket more firmly around him. He’s only out here for fifteen minutes, and he’s gotten used to eating his lunch after work, but that doesn’t mean he’s any more open to the idea of frostbite. Apparently you can grow used to your limbs, if you have them for long enough.

“Favourite flower?”

It’s not exactly the sort of question Louis was expecting to answer, especially when the type of ones he was asking were all along the ‘what football team do you support’ line, and it’s not one he’s really put much thought into either.

“Erm. Roses?” He asks, even though he’s supposed to be stating his answer, and any kind of reply is better than none. “You?”

Harry, who’d favoured his response with an particularly unimpressed glance, clears his throat. “I’d have to go with dahlias. They’re lovely, but they don’t grow that well in England. I like forget me not’s because of the name, though.”

“Oh.” Louis manages, because he doesn’t know a whole lot about flowers. At all. “So. Next question: Favourite season.”

“Spring.” Harry says, in a muse-y sort of tone that tells Louis that Harry’s thinking over his answer in painful amounts of detail. “Summer is overrated, in Autumn things die. Winter is good, though. You can always rely on winter.” He gives on of Louis his (should probably patent it, really) ‘I’m mulling over highly important thoughts that I can’t disclose to you’ face.

“Winter is good. New Year, new start, hot chocolate and freezing you ass off outside and all that.” Agrees Louis, and Harry hums, searching for a question. If he asks Louis about his favourite kind of butterfly he’s all these different types of screwed.

“Do you believe in God?” Queries Harry, and, well, that’s not what Louis was expecting either. Full of surprises, Harry is.

“I believe- I. I don’t know what I believe.” Louis says, tongue stumbling over the words. He’s never really tried to pigeonhole what he believed, because it doesn’t seem like it matters anymore. “I guess there might be something, or someone, or whatever. But then there might not be.”

Nodding, Harry closes his hands around the ceramic of the cup, smoke rising up to curl around the slopes of his face. Even the smoke seems to be struck by him.

“I’m not going to eat you, Louis. I didn’t really have an opinion myself until. Uh. Recently.” Harry says, laughing gently so that the push of air causes ripples to form on the liquid surface of his drink. The smoke moves in time with it, before resuming back to floating past Harry.

“What is your opinion then, O asker of difficult questions?”

“Someone’s gotta ask them.” Harry says, turning up one corner of his mouth in a crooked smile (he’s beautiful oh so beautiful and hard to look at like a burning and radiant star a single flash against nothingness and Louis loves it and he can’t (won’t) think about how else that sentence could end because it’s too much too fast).  
“I believe that-. I don’t want to say I belong to any religion, if I’m honest, and honesty is a good thing, right? It’s just, these religions have all these different things you have to go along with, and I don’t agree with those at all. So I’m not sure where that puts me. I believe in a God, yeah. Somewhere out there, there’s a God. I don’t know if he created the world, or whatever, or at least not in the Bible seven-days thing. Maybe he orchestrated the Big Bang? I dunno, really. But there’s an afterlife. I have to believe that, or it just all seems so short, so-”  
Harry breaks off to sigh deeply, and take a sip of mocha before continuing. Louis’s forgotten how much he loves to hear Harry’s voice run on repeat like a looped record, it’s rough comfort like two sticks rubbed together to create sparks of fire.  
“-pointless. All in all, that’s God, tick, and the afterlife, tick. Not sure about Paradise and Heaven, though. Couldn’t say what would be Heaven, for me.”

Louis tries to keep his mind wholly focused on the words Harry is saying, and not how he flexes out the muscles of his fingers, stretching them out to point upwards when he reads out his checklist.

“Anything else?” Louis quips, and Harry chuckles like the noise comes from the pit of his stomach.

“Does angels count?”

“ I think angels count.” Says Louis faintly, looking at Harry and noticing the strokes of pale pink on his cheeks. It’s probably the numbing cold.

“Well, I got them too. Perhaps not in the harp playing, white fluffy wings way, but someone’s gotta be watching out for us, right?”

Louis chooses not to answer that, because a) he wasn’t sure whether it was a rhetorical question or not, and b) he wouldn’t know where to beginning answering it without saying “Maybe no one is, and we’re all alone after all”.

“Angels, huh?” He says instead, and Harry smiles, a full smile that splits his face like the rays of the sun are trying to seep through.

“Hallelujah.” Harry replies, taking a small bite of the cupcake. Some of the frosting is dotted on the corner of his mouth, and it’d be so easy for Louis to reach up and smooth it off. He doesn’t.

“Hallelujah.” Louis repeats.

(Somehow, it becomes something that Louis just associates as being so fundamentally _Harry_ that he never questions it).

*

Day Twenty Four: Coffee, milk no sugar, and a sprinkle doughnut

“We reached the end of the hot drinks list, and I made the executive decision that it’s fucking freezing, so not cold drinks. Therefore we have come full circle, and you are celebrating with the first order I gave you. Not that you really ordered anything. Oh God, sellotape my mouth or something. It’ll do you a favour.”

Harry looks up at Louis, squinting his eyes, and smiles his thanks. It’s a bit like a thousand tiny pinpricks into his heart, bleeding out into his chest.

“You really have no idea.” Murmurs Harry, and Louis doesn’t know if he was supposed to hear that or not, so he plumps down next to Harry and shuffles under the blanket.

“Aren’t you going to give a speech on the wonderfulness of my person, how much you do adore me, et cetera?” Asks Louis, when the only thing in the air is a brisk winter wind, and Harry’s eyes glint.

“Who says any of that is true?” Is all he says, but it’s enough to warrant Louis’s clutching at his face and pretend horror (or so he justifies).

“And here I was, Harry, truly believing that there was something special here all this time. Have you been misleading me since the very first moment we met, you scoundrel?”

“Naturally. It’s all for the sake of the free coffee.” Agrees Harry, swallowing some to prove his point.

“How do you do that?” Asks Louis curiously, because it’s been pissing him off for all of twenty four days that feel like twenty four years (but they’ve just flown past).

“You might need to explain yourself a little more coherently, Louis.” Harry says serenely, and just because Louis thinks Harry’s absolutely breathtaking doesn’t mean he won’t deck him.

“Not burn your tongue when you drink it so fast.” He shoots out, leaving just enough pause between the words so they don’t sew together.

“Oh, that. Uh, when you go to drink it, suck in a breath, and hold it while you drink. I dunno, it works.”

“Maybe I did take the wrong job.” Breathes out Louis, watching Harry eagerly as he sips his coffee.

“You admit to my supreme intelligence in matters of importance, then?” Persists Harry, and Louis raises an eyebrow. He’ll give over the compliment eventually, he always intends to, but he wants Harry to fight for it, at least.

“Intelligence, no. Knowledge of weird and sometimes useful facts, yes.”

Harry droops like a dehydrated flower, mouth and eyes turning down piteously.

“If you give me this, I’ll work on that speech as to why I love you.” Harry promises, and Louis’s stomach does this funny thing where it seems to knot itself before turning into heavy lead, and his vision swims for a second. He hadn’t said those words, he _knows_ he didn’t, he chose the ones he used so painstakingly specifically, careful to remain neutral, and Harry-  
Harry just keeps on knocking down every barrier Louis puts up as though they’re mere illusions.

“You should work on that anyway.” Louis says through immovable lips. He hopes Harry will put this down to the cold.

“It’s the only offer you’re getting, take it or leave it.” Replies Harry, and Louis must be getting better at reading eyes because Harry’s mouth is thinned into a line but his eyes, they’re smiling.

“I’ll take it amiably, then.” Begrudges Louis, sniffing. Maybe he’s got the beginnings of a cold coming along. “But I can replace you easily, I’ll have you know. In fact, there’s a great lad who just started working here, thinks I’m mildly homicidal and a being from outer space.”

“He doesn’t.” States Harry, shaking his head, pulling off a chunk of the doughnut and popping it into his mouth.

“I can’t be sure, but he seemed pretty into the story. Natural born actor, me, could’ve been on the big screen.” Louis’s a brag, of course, but only when he’s lying.

“Who would’ve given me coffee then?” Asks Harry, looking up at Louis with the fucking massive eyes that seem all pupil until you distinguish between the black and the green.

“Who indeed, Harry.”

*

Day Twenty Six: Cappuccino and a slice of coffee cake

The day gets off to a pretty shit start, because at some point during the night, Louis managed to fling his alarm clock off of his bedside table without ever waking himself, and when Louis does wake, the batteries from the clock are strewn across the carpet of his bedroom floor.

“Shit, fuck, why does this happen to me-”

“What are you doing here? No, stay where you are. Louis, mate, it’s nearly twelve. No point going in now.” Calls Niall’s voice from the kitchen, because Niall got a job at a bar and uses this to his advantage by ruining all the good housework he and Zayn (mostly, if not all, Zayn, because Louis’s idea of cleaning is waving a cloth about and declaring it clean) do when they’re at home.

“No, but I really need to go in today, and-”

“You should’ve left hours ago, though. No one’ll love you for turning up now.”

For the second time running, Niall interrupts him again. Harry would never do such a thing; Louis spares a glance for the crumpled paper on the table, which didn’t get knocked off. Leaning across, he captures the sheet between his thumb and index finger, lying it flat on his palm and smoothing it out again.

_I like it when you talk._

The sinking, falling feeling is back in his stomach, and his heart seems to deal with the slack, beating at an extra hundred pumps a second.

“I’m so screwed for you.” Louis whispers, even though he knows whispers carry more in silences than a low murmur. “Look what you’ve done to me.”

Carefully, Louis places the note back on his table, and goes back to the immediate business of dressing himself and getting to the coffee shop before Harry puts him down as a no show. Also, because Louis has decided that looking fantastic is much more important than the possibility of dying, he chooses a tight-knit jumper in powder blue, and a pair of jeans that is, no matter how many times Zayn questions the physics of it, more than possible to sit down in. Perhaps he should surround himself with more believers in the flexibility of his jeans.

“See ya, Niall.” Louis calls out, walking through the flat, into the kitchen and back out again fast enough that Niall’s outstretched fingers aren’t able to catch him from where he’s lying on a sofa (Niall is yet to notice that his lethargy can create difficulties for him).

It is bitterly cold outside, a harsh wind that stings his skin, but Louis’s fine with this (well, no, he isn’t, but he tells himself he is), because he’s not going to be out here for much longer. Hopefully, anyway, because his nose is beginning to have that uncomfortable sensation where it feels like it’s been carved out of stone on your face. Louis keeps a firm hold of the plastic bag in his hand; this wind is a lot too strong for his fingers –the muscles feel as though they’re frozen in place. Maybe he’s turning into a complete marble statue.

“Harry.” He says solemnly, standing in front of the bundle under the sleeping bag. “Bet you thought you wouldn’t see me today.”

“Louis.” Harry replies, equally as serious, blinking up blearily at him. For his part, Louis still isn’t sure whether the ‘I sleep all day’ act is, in fact, an act, as Harry always seems to be magnificently alert most of the time. “Didn’t see you walk in today.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be asleep?”

Harry looks like a rabbit (albeit with enormous eyes) caught in headlights, mixed with discomfiture and abashed guilt.

“My sleeping mind notices many things.” He hedges, and Louis laughs.

“Do you watch me when I go in, in the morning? Am I not just one, but _two_ highlights of your day?”

And then, seeing as how they’re both –probably- mature adults, they poke out their tongues at each other in synchronisation, before Louis bends down slowly to perch next to Harry.

“How’d you get anything if you’re not at work today? Why _aren’t_ you at work today, more importantly?”

“Pushed my alarm off in the night, and woke up stupidly late.” Louis thinks it’s okay to hate his mind for keeping him up at night, tossing on the covers and smothered by an absence of light.

“How do you push your alarm off?” Asks Harry in interest, peering over the edge of the carrier bag. His hand, Louis reflects, shouldn’t have to be resting on his knee, and Louis’s crouch was precarious enough to begin with.

“I’m surprisingly agile, I’ll have you know.”

“Naturally.” Agrees Harry, looking up at him with his fucking ridiculous eyes and his fucking ridiculous smile and Louis isn’t sure whether his gut instinct is to punch him, flee the scene or push him against the wall and kiss him so hard it bruises.

He doesn’t do any of those rather extreme suggestions.

“I have a flask. It’s only cappuccino, from our dear coffee machine, and I borrowed a slice of the coffee cake that Zayn brought back from a work party.”

“Who brings home cake from a party?”

“Zayn, I suppose.” Counters Louis, handing the flask over and then the cake in it’s little plastic box and little plastic fork.

“And doesn’t the usage of the term borrow require returning it back at some point?”

“No need to get smart, Harry.” Points out Louis, holding the box somewhere above Harry’s head. His fingers are taking a very long time to actually let go of the box, and this is repayment for Harry verbalising the flaws in Louis’s terminology. His sentences are _fine_ , if you don’t take them literally. Which sounds a bit like Louis doesn’t want himself to be taken seriously, and he does. God, even his thoughts make no sense.

“Sorry, O Great One.” Replies Harry meekly, and Louis is mollified enough to hand over the box.

Louis’s beginning to feel slightly dizzy from the constant crouching combined with watching Harry’s tongue dip into the frosting of the cake (even though it’s on a spoon), so he stretches his legs out and sits down more comfortably with his back against the wall.

“If any of my work friends see me, I’m screwed.” He remarks conversationally, and Harry grins.

“Didn’t know you had any friends, Louis. Aside from yours truly, of course, but I’m an exceptional circumstance.”

“Of course you are.” Louis says absently, ignoring the quip and watching the movements of Harry’s mouth. “You eat so weirdly. All tongue.”

Harry, as if proving a point, sticks out his tongue again, and Louis hates how obscene the gesture is when it really shouldn’t be.

“Fuck you.” Harry responds, swallowing some of the cappuccino, an Louis’s mouth answers before his brain can quite stop it.

“I’d love to.”

Well, bollocks.

“Not in front of the nice people, Louis dear, they might not want to see us doing the dirty.”

The choirs of angels that Harry so vehemently believes in must be looking after him and prompting Harry to not take him seriously.

“Are you sure? They might enjoy it.”

“What if _I_ don’t want to be seen doing the dirty?”

“I’ll take you home then.” Louis offers, and well, fuck is his voice serious.

Fuckety fuck fuckbuckets. Screw all the angels.

Even Harry doesn’t have an answer for that, and if his eyes get any wider the rest of his face is going to be completely obscured, and his eyeballs might even spring out of their sockets.

“Uh.” Louis says eloquently, and Harry echoes him.

“That was spontaneous.” Louis comments, and he briefly considers whether the ‘Flee for his life’ option is still viable, or whether he’d look completely guilty.

“Where’d that come from?” Questions Harry, steaming coffee still clasped in his hand and a forkful of cake that never finished the journey to his mouth in the other.

“No idea, mate. Sorry.”

If he wasn’t currently wondering whether a quick jump naked into a lava in front of everyone he ever knew would be less embarrassing than this, Louis would congratulate himself on his successful dropping in of a very platonic endearment.

“Don’t apologise. It was, um, nice. I think.” Harry says, softly, and he leant over so Louis could hear him and Louis turned so Harry wouldn’t have to and now there’s only a few inches of space between them.

“Hi.” Harry says, and Louis swallows.

“Can I ask you something?” He asks, and Harry nods, the goddamn fork still clutched in his hand. “Where’d you go when I finish work?”

“Oh.” Harry says, leaning back to his normal position, and Louis nearly punches himself in the eye because he did not mean to ask _that fucking question._ “I go to the church down the road. Christ the King, or something. It’s pretty quiet then. Good for thinking.”

“What do you think about?” Persists Louis, because despite his self directed frustration, he’s naturally inquisitive (which, Zayn says, is just a polite way of saying he’s a snoop).

“Angels.” Harry replies, smiling at him in a way that’s most likely illegal in fourteen different countries. “Don’t you know they’re all around us?”

“Ever seen any back home?” Louis asks, grinning, and misses completely the way Harry’s smile drops before resurfacing.

“Perhaps.” He says, and Louis nods.

“Hallelujah.”

“Hallelujah.” Repeats Harry, finally getting the forkful of cake to his mouth.

When Louis arrives back at his flat, and cheerfully ignores Niall’s insults, he kicks a wall because he could be the unknown King of fucking up chances.

*

Day Twenty Seven: Hot Chocolate with whipped cream and a coconut cupcake

It’s possibly not a good thing on an apocalyptically awful scale that Day Twenty Seven marks the returning of Louis’s schedule to what it was exactly twenty seven days ago.  
When he arrives at the coffee shop this morning, fingers buried into the sides of his jacket to keep in any and all warmth, there’s no sleeping bag-covered person lying outside. There isn’t a non-sleeping bag covered person. There isn’t even a _sleeping bag._

“Fuck.” Louis says, and stands in his usual spot that he reserves for his not-so-secret-after-all staring at Harry. The pavement looks a lot bigger without someone filling it up lengthways.

Shaking himself out of his reverie, Louis walks inside, and it’s still warm and the walls are still buttercup yellow and there are still the same line drawings of different types of hot drinks on the wall. Same, same, same, same, different.

“Jesus, I’ve seen happier faces on crying children.” Han informs him. After a few seconds, Louis realises she was referring to him.

“Everyone has off-days.” His voice sounds flat even to himself. Hopefully he’s over-analysing.

“Your mopey voice just backed me up.”

“Fuck off.” Louis says, going to hang up his coat, but there’s no malice in the words. If he’s brutally honest, there’s no anything in the words. Words are sort of meaningless, really, not when you have expressions and actions and eyes. Especially the words ‘sad’ and ‘happy’, because they’re just fillers. Nothing words used by people who’re predisposed to saying something whilst saying nothing at all (when what they wanted to describe was colossal, impossible, and indescribable).

“Nothing to do with the empty space outside?”

“Huh?” Louis asks, looking vaguely in her direction and trying to remember whether he’d taken someone’s order or not. He should get some more sleep.

“Your kicked in the balls expression. No, it’s more sad than that. The ‘everyone I love has pulled out my internal organs and feasted upon them in front of me as tears stream down my face’ expression.”

“Thanks for the vividity of that explanation.”

“Vividity isn’t a word.” Han says smoothly. “Don’t ignore the question.”

“What was the original question?” Most irritating person inside the coffee shop award goes to Louis Tomlinson.

“You know what I mean, genius. Do you really need me to spell it out?”

“I’d prefer it if you used phonetics.”

If looks really could kill, and that saying is all the range in pulp literature, then the gory ritual Han depicted not two minutes ago would be really happening on this terracotta-tile floor.

By the time Louis’s break rolls around, and it always seemed to take a long time coming but today, in particular, it’s like a tonne weight has been added on to every second, he’s holding a tall glass of hot chocolate in his right hand, and the cupcake in his left. Little flakes of desiccated coconut fell off it when he picked it up, and it makes him inexplicably sad that they’re going to waste.

The pavement still looks a few paving stones too large.

Also, because Louis is a prime idiot who always forgets to remember his jacket when going outside but can recite nearly every line in _To Kill A Mockingbird_ (classics are classics for a reason), the possibility of him losing a limb shoots up dramatically.

“Would I look crazy if I start talking now?” Louis asks the air where Harry usually is.

“Yes, you fucking weirdo.” Answers a rather rude pedestrian before carrying on walking. Louis wants to know whether the inevitable beating would be worth running up to him and throwing his imitation gold headphones in the road. It’s not like Robbie Williams will help the guy’s image anyway.

By the time Louis decides to be bold and brave and wonderful, the pedestrian has long since pedestrian-ed away.

Louis spends the rest of his break holding a hot chocolate with melting cream and a coconut cupcake. It’s a no show from Harry, and if Louis could’ve made it when he was destined to stay at home, Harry could’ve made the effort too.

“You okay?” Asks Liam when Louis comes back in, nose tingling from the sudden rise in temperature.

“You see, Liam, this-” he interrupts himself to put down both the items he’s holding, put one arm around Liam’s shoulder and spin him so Han can see their bond of friendship, “Is why I like you more.”

“More than who?” Liam asks in confusion. Louis sighs.

“I thought I was the slow one.” He says sadly. “But better than her.” The last, nodding his head at Han.

“You really like me better?”

Goddamn if Liam isn’t the reincarnation of a particularly emotional, grave little Chihuahua.

“Don’t you like _me_ better, my most dearest friend?” Han, she’s the reincarnation of a nasty viper.

“How about I like you both equally?”

Louis considers himself the reincarnation of a very put-upon businessman with six troublesome kids.

*

Day Twenty Eight: Gingerbread latte and a red velvet cupcake

“You’re moping.”

“I’m not moping.” Louis snaps in reply. It’s lucky that snapping is not one of the signs of moping.

“Uncalled for anger is one of the signs of moping.”

“Screw you.” Says Louis tiredly, lifting a slice of chocolate tart onto a small plate. Sometimes Louis forgets that he’s not the only person to actually take the food in this cafe.

“Not my type.”

Louis needs new friends.

“What is your type then?” He asks, letting himself fall into the trap for once (he needs to, or else she’d give up setting them and there’s no fun in that).

“You know. Tall, muscular, athletic, hard-working, successful, good-looking.” She says airily, because her faux-casual is very bad. Her antithesis of everything Louis is (except the good looking, and he works hard to fight for the TV remote) is excellent, however.

“You want to marry a Ken doll?” Asks Louis, forming his mouth into a small ‘O’, and by the time Louis’s got the tea towel off his face, she’s disappeared.

The weather has lightened up today, and it’s only a small sub zero instead of the near liquid nitrogen style temperatures he was becoming used to. Doesn’t stop his arms prickling, but it does stop his heart from giving out, or becoming more encased in ice than his personality already had done.

“Got your favourites. I do remember things.” Louis says to the pavement. ‘Clap three times and say I believe in angels’ his mind says snarkily, because even Louis’s thoughts have to be out to get him. “Not my jacket though.” He adds mournfully.

If he could ignore the worried looks of the people walking past, and probably those inside the cafe, he could continue his break in this strain very easily. It’s not like Harry talked when they first met, anyway.

“I’m warning you, if you don’t show, I’m eating this cake, and then I’m drinking your latte. Seriously.”

When Louis’s next shift starts, the cake is in the display case again and Louis’s poured the coffee down the kitchen sink.

*

Day Thirty Two: Nothing, nothing, and a little more nothing on the side

“Are we seeing the rise of change? Louis Tomlinson, spending his break in here, with –with _me?_ ” Whispers Han, looking up over her phone to stare at him with wide eyes.

“Breaks get lonely when you’re alone. And I always forget my jacket.”

Han makes a small humming noise, looking back down at her phone screen. Good to know some things never change.

“You’re giving new meanings to the word pining, by the way. Fucking pine trees have less pine than you do.”

“Hilarious.” Louis says, but chuckles anyway because does she try.

“I’m still serious, under my endearing banter. You need to stop looking like someone-”

“I’ve had my fill of the grisly metaphors, thanks.” Interrupts Louis hastily, holding up his hands in denial.

“Wasn’t going to be one. I was going to say like someone had shot your favourite mockingbird instead of the bluejay they were aiming for.”

Louis nearly falls off his seat in surprise.

“Did you just make a highly clichéd _To Kill A Mockingbird_ reference?” He asks, covering the lower half of his face with spread fingers.

“I believe I did, yes.”

“Things really are changing.” Louis says reverently, looking up to the ceiling. “Angels are bringing about Paradise on Earth.”

His poor choice of words hit him like a truck load of bricks to the head, followed by vultures pecking at his insides whilst he suffers in silent agony.

“What now?” Han asks in her idea of a comforting voice (it sounds highly resigned to her fate).

“Nothing.” Louis says shortly, looking at the wall opposite like he could possibly bore holes into it with his mind. Although, if he had that kind of power, he could just magic Harry back to (where he’s supposed to be) outside the shop.

“Don’t give me that crap. It’s like all the joy in the world just poured right off your face.”

The abrupt need to go out and check the shop front is like an overwhelming itch, but instead of being skin deep it’s carried inside his blood.

“M’fine.” He says, not trusting his mouth to not betray him and spill everything he’s thinking without his mind’s permission. Life’s a bitch that way.

“Sure. And I’ve got a brain made of candyfloss. Don’t agree to that.” She adds quickly, when Louis opens his mouth to do just that.

“M’fine.” Louis repeats, tapping one foot to try and release the excess energy. A whitewash wall has never seemed so maddeningly in the way as it has before this moment.

“Come on, Louis. You’ve know this kid what? A month?”

“Thirty two days.” Louis says absently, noticing the flurry of movement somewhere in the corner of his eye as she flings her hands up to the ceiling. The tapping spreads to both feet, but the movement doesn’t seem to be helping much.

“You even kept count? Why did you keep count?”

“I keep count of everything.” He tells her, flexing and fisting his fingers in tandem with each other.

“When did we meet, then?” Han asks. Beware the non believer.

“Two hundred and seventy three days ago.” Louis says. He wonders if standing up on his chair and performing an impromptu body ripple would remove any of the itch that are more like a burn or a fast spreading poison.

“You made that number up.” Han says cosily, and Louis smiles.

“Maybe I did.” He says, standing up and crossing the room.

“Moping!” She calls after him, and Louis flips her off.

There’s no figure that he can see through the glass, but he can’t always. There is a run of brick wall for Harry to lean up against, after all, and it’s a lot more private than some shop window.

Louis also spends the remainder of this break standing alone.

*

Day Forty: Nothing, but especially not Nutella

‘Maybe it would’ve been different if I’d kissed him’ Louis reflects mournfully, staring at the coffee machine as it loads the macchiato for part of an order of seven (seven!) different drinks. It had to have been something Louis had done, or Harry wouldn’t have left.

Perhaps Louis, despite his improvised version of twenty questions, didn’t know Harry at all.

“Here you go, you’re welcome.” He tells the family (or friends, but he doesn’t know many married couples who hang about with five kids- who’s he to judge, though). Louis thinks he forgets to add the accompanying smile.

He’s got important things to be mulling over, after all. For example, why did my mouth choose to become erratically self-dependant and work without my command? Why, of all moments in the history of moments, did it have to be that one?

This isn’t pining. This is simply (digging up the bones of the past and raking them over) re-evaluating the facts as they happened.

‘It could’ve been something else that happened that day’ he thinks pensively, but that’s probably not true. Harry told him that the rest of his day consisted of soup from the Salvation Army and reflection time in Christ the Why Did You Let Me Fuck This Up, which Louis has now renamed it. Unless any of those hold things that could convince Harry to run again, it was Louis and his ruination of romantic moments.

As a spiteful revenge, he makes himself a gingerbread latte, because Harry loved it so much. He burns his tongue on it, and karma is a load of bullshit.

“I want to die.” He tells Liam when Liam’s about to go for his own lunch break. Liam’s eyebrows disappear into his hairline and his eyes widen until they’re the only feature left on his face. Liam leaves anyway, and mostly because Louis prodded him so he’d start walking, but he got out some of that pent-up self loathing.

“Don’t worry Louis, we all sympathise.” Han says, walking past him. Louis sighs melodramatically and wonders whether burning down the shop would give him any kind of satisfaction.

As soon as Louis has shut the apartment door behind him, a cushion soars into his peripheral vision before hitting him square on the face.

“What was that for, you pricks?” He yells, hugging the cushion to him so it can’t be reclaimed as a possible weapon (except by himself, of course).

“It’s a warning.” Niall replies cheerfully. Louis notices that Niall’s wearing bright green pyjama bottoms and nothing else, and dipping his finger into the (family sized) pot of Nutella he has in his other hand.

“A warning for what?” Louis asks, strangely and horrifically fascinated by the way that Niall can fit his whole hand into the tub, scoop some up and thrust all his fingers into his mouth. He also thinks there’s smearings of Nutella on Niall’s chest that may or may not be in a pentagram.

“To not bother us poor folk with your whiny ‘I miss my homeless friend’ issues. We are done.” Niall says, licking his lips in satisfaction. He regards his hand for a moment, seems to come to some kind of conclusion, and dips his hand back in again (Niall must have some flexible, stretchy hand, because there is no way that the lid is big enough for that kind of thing).

“I don’t bother you with anything.” Louis replies, trying to stand on his dignity.

“Mmughfy.” Niall says around a mouthful of fingers and Nutella. There might even be some in his hair.

“Sorry, Louis doesn’t speak the language of the self-cannibals.” He says, and Niall grins, and his teeth are all brown. It’s nauseating.

“He means, your kicked in the face look says it all.” Zayn says, appearing from the kitchen. He’s wearing the other half of the fluorescent pyjamas, but he’s wearing blue check drawstring pyjamas with it and the effect means Louis has to look at the floor to avoid visual impairment.

“I have no such look, you bastards. And you have a Nutella facemask on.” He points out. Zayn laughs.

“Funny, I noticed that. And you so, _so_ do have one.”

“Why are you even here? Shouldn’t you be at work?” Louis asks, switching the topic away from his pining slash moping life story and on to the fact that his flatmates are insane.

“I was sick. And after enough daytime telly, I was better. The celebration called for Nutella.”

In the end, Louis retreats to his bedroom, lies under the covers and doesn’t think of how he can’t ever use chocolate spread again, or of Harry’s lips, his eyes, his face.

(Maybe he thinks of Harry a tiny bit).

*

Day Forty Three: One coffee (milk, no sugar), a gingerbread latte and three sprinkle doughnuts

In Louis’s mind, what marks day forty three as special from the offset is that everything runs too smoothly. Actually, the morning is a carbon copy of every morning Louis had had (before Harry) forty three days ago or more, and that’s strange, because there has always, _always_ been something going wrong.

This morning, in fact, he doesn’t even stop to have his usual staring contest with the paving slabs, and that’s a definite improvement.

“I feel like I have gotten over my pining.” He tells Han and a slightly if not monumentally confused Liam.

Louis feels like the fact that Han doesn’t take the opportunity to needle him for admitting there were some pining activities taking place should be a sign of something, but he doesn’t know what. He stresses the point anyway. “Not that I was pining. I mean the theoretical kind.”

“There’s theoretical pining?” Liam asks in interest. Louis throws a cleaning cloth at him, which misses, and nearly falls into the cup of tea that Liam had just brewed.

So Louis, by right of having decided that today is the day where he puts his schedule back together, is quite pleased with himself. (However, he’s less than pleased to note that Niall and Zayn have switched his sandwiches with a little pot full of Nutella).

That’s all immaterial, though.

Seeing as Louis steadfastly refused to touch any of his lunch for fear it had been contaminated (“By what?” Han asked, sort of warily and sort of reconciled. “You would really rather not know.” Louis muttered in reply, narrowing his eyes at the pot), he’d been relegated to looking after the till whilst Liam took an earlier than usual lunch.

Things always happen to Louis during the time he should be eating.

“I’d like a coffee, please.”

And Louis may not have heard that voice for sixteen days, but it’s still sandpaper and low thrumming melodies.

“I’m afraid we’re out.” He murmurs, reverting to childhood and afraid to look up in case the illusion shatters into tiny, reflective shards.

“That’s a shame. I’ve missed the free coffee.”

Louis isn’t sure whether that’s a synonym for ‘I missed you’ but right now, it doesn’t matter.

“Where the _fuck_ have you been?” He asks, keeping his voice low because the cafe is always busy at this time and the last thing he needs is to lose his job because his volume control is broken.

“I had to go somewhere. I should’ve told you. God, I’m so sorry Louis.”

“You should be.” Louis replies, looking up.

The illusion doesn’t shatter.

 

As it turns out, Louis manages to locate some coffee from somewhere after all, and gets a latte and a doughnut (or maybe two) (or maybe three) for good measure. The shop, of course, can watch itself.

“You look. Well.” Louis says into the silence. He’s usually very good with silence, when it comes his way, but this one feels too heavy even for him.

“Haven’t got the sleeping bag. I feel like I’ve lost some part of me.” Harry says, reaching for the coffee mug and sipping. Naturally, he doesn’t burn his mouth.  
It’s true, though; Harry does look well, looks bloody amazing, with a loose red jumper and tight jeans, and he’s still got the knitted hat on. Frankly, Louis’s never been so glad to see lumpy knitting in his entire life.

“Should’ve walked in with it. What a show that would’ve been for the customers.”

“The amazing sleeping bag-man.” Harry replies, laughing, and Louis laughs because Harry is ridiculous and Louis is ridiculous and this is all ridiculous.

“Are we going to talk about it?” Louis says, eventually, when they’ve run down yet another conversation with short sentences and long looks. He feels like _someone_ has to say it, or his head will implode.

“Talk about what?” Harry asks, feigning innocence, and Louis kicks his shin under the table.

“Stupidity may work for me, but it doesn’t work against me. Why did you go?”

“Firstly, ouch.” Harry begins, setting down his empty cup and the second doughnut. Absently, Louis pushes the latte towards him, because Louis never really intended to drink it anyway. “And secondly...Can I plead the fifth on that too?”

“Like I said, that’s an American law phrase.” Louis says, frowning, and tearing off a small piece of the doughnut.

“But what a good one.” Replies Harry, pulling the doughnuts out of the reach of Louis’s hands and resting the plate on his lap.

“Are you sure you don’t want to tell me? It’s supposed to be cleansing, or whatever, to let it all out.” Persists Louis gently, leaning forward and lowering his voice. Louis is very proud of his tension building abilities (he could’ve been an actor, if he wasn’t destined for his fame to come from making coffee).

“I want to. I do.” Harry says, meeting Louis’s eyes and holding them. Harry’s irises are darker at the edges, Louis notices, and this is the first time they’ve spoken where Harry hasn’t always been tinged blue or red with cold. “But it’s a long story.”

“I’m good with long stories. Unless they’re boring, but I don’t think you’ll bore me.” If he honest, Louis doesn’t think Harry could ever bore him (he keeps fucking up Louis’s routine, for one thing). Out of the corner of his eye, Louis spots Han and Liam openly staring at them like the ‘Louis’s social life’ gossip vultures they really are at heart.

“Maybe I need to figure out the story myself, first.”

Louis nods slowly, watching Harry purse his lips and blow air onto the top of the coffee.

“When you want to tell it – _if_ you want to tell it- I’ll be here. Or at the flat. I didn’t actually mean ‘here’ as in literally here. Please stop me talking.”

Softly, Harry chuckles, looking at Louis over the rim of his cup, and the words sound so much _more_ in his voice than Louis ever thought words could.

“I like it when you talk.”

(Their first kiss isn’t the beautifully romantic scenario Louis thought it would be. Films and books are, in essence, lying shits. But, in some ways (in most ways) it was better, and more them; Louis hadn’t been able, once he’d shown Harry around his flat, to find anything to say, at all, because it felt like once he opened his mouth, he’d shatter the moment with a ten tonne hammer. And, you know, whenever Louis opens his mouth, he tends to stick his foot in it and promptly carry on talking.

“You’re quiet.” Harry remarked, and Louis jumped –fucking _jumped_ \- like he’d forgotten Harry was there. And of course he knew, because he’s standing in his kitchen (which is also the scene of the Great Coffee Machine Disaster), and Harry’s there, and it’s most likely impossible to forget that Harry is there.

“’m thinking.” He said, trying to stand on his self-admittedly small dignity, and Harry chuckled. (It wasn’t enough, Louis can see that his eyes are nervous, like he’s suddenly worried that Louis’s done a whopping U-turn and no longer wants Harry around).

“Penny for them.” Harry says, because now Harry’s the one who doesn’t shut up, and Louis squints at him.

“People haven’t said that in decades.”

“I’m one of a kind, aren’t I?” And someone with that much vanity (however jokingly said) should not be able to make that endearing, but it bloody is, and if Louis wasn’t probably most likely definitely infatuated with him, he’d hate him for it.

It’s suddenly a lot clearer to him that he needs to stop thinking, and _do_ something, so he does.

“Did you know it’s been forty three days since we met?” Louis says, feet shuffling closer to where Harry is standing –coincidentally, in front of the coffee machine.

“Nope.” Harry replies, and that’s a good enough answer for Louis (although the word itself was a disagreement). He reaches up, and he has to stand up on his toes to do that (it’ll probably piss him off more later), placing a hand either side of Harry’s neck, and presses their lips together. There’s a moment where Louis thinks that he’s royally fucked this up (again), because there’s no reciprocation from Harry, but then Harry’s lips begin moving, his tongue swiping against Louis’s lower lip, and whoever said that first kisses are supposed to be sweet and gentle have never met Harry Styles, evidently. It’s teeth clinking and Louis pushing Harry back into the counter, hands reaching out to touch skin; Louis thinks it should be different to what it is, because he still feels, with his eyes closed, that Harry’s this cold-skinned kid outside his work, but how he uses his tongue to lick along the inside of Louis’s cheek is not anything like a kid.

Actually, they kiss -breathing through their noses for the sake of oxygen- until Harry bangs an elbow against the coffee machine and pressing all the wrong buttons, apparently, because a hot stream of water shoots out and sprays across the cupboard behind it, dripping hot droplets of water down the wood, closely followed by some steam and a whirring noise once the spray of water has finished.

“I think we broke it,” Harry whispers, mouth moving against Louis’s neck, and shit, but that is distracting.

“You can pay for it later.” Louis replies, joining their fingers and reintroducing Harry to his bedroom.)

 

*

Day Seventy: Coffee (milk, no sugar) and chocolate cupcake

Falling in love is painless.

Much more so than people say it is, anyway. For Louis, falling in love wasn’t the hardest kind of falling; he thinks that actually, it’s the easiest. That could just be Harry, though, because Harry squeezed himself into Louis’s life as though there’s been a Harry-shaped hole there all along and he’d just never noticed.  
The days are easy, blurs of motion and standing-still and thoughts and it’s all Harry, it’s always Harry (unless it’s not, but it usually is). And the nights, they’re easy, when Louis presses in to him with desperate need, slick heat exploring slick heat, and wandering hands wanting to know every single piece of pale skin, learn it with his fingers and his mouth  so it can always be committed to memory, the silk of Harry’s body in a dark room–so he does. After, when they’re tired and the room is dark, there’s Harry to hold or be held by, and Louis sleeps.

Harry’s older now, Louis thinks. Not in physical years, but it’s like the last of boyhood slunk off the night Harry left but didn’t return with him. Louis feels a little better about that, because he would’ve really felt like he’d have been violating a minor when he blew Harry in the hallway. It was dodgy enough anyway, because Harry’s eyes were still dark and Louis’s cheeks were still flushed when Niall and Zayn came back from doing the shopping.

“Harry.” Zayn had said, looking at them both, adding two and two and making some weird answer that Louis can’t explain.

“Yeah?”

“Your fly is undone.” He’d said, before walking into the kitchen to unpack the bags. Niall fell onto the floor laughing, and was found there later, lying on the carpet and still grinning.

But all in all? It’s painless, and easy, like closing your eyes and you’re there.

 

The afternoon of Day Seventy was slow business at the cafe, and Louis was unspeakably thankful because Harry chose to drop in and Louis could abandon his duties without having to pretend he regretted it.

“You’re eschewing your friends for your lover.” Han says sorrowfully, and Louis nods, reaching out to straighten her name badge because it’s fallen crooked (a-fucking-gain).

“It’s all part of the alien master plan.” He tells her, and she bats him away with her hands.

“You better leave before I tell Harry the Great Louis Depression.” She warns, prodding him with her foot, and Louis leaves quickly because she actually began that story once and he’s of no mind to have it completed.

“Fancy seeing you here.” He says to Harry, taking the seat opposite. “It’s almost like you knew I worked here, or something.”

“Really?” Harry asks, tilting his head. “I had no idea. I thought you worked in a bank.”

“This brings in more money.” Louis informs him solemnly, and Harry nods agreement. It’s still cold outside, as the English weather doesn’t seem to register the advent of Spring as being in any way important, and Harry looks beautiful, cheeks stung pink by the wind and hair blown every which way.

“I wanted to talk to you. Seriously.” Harry says, and Louis’s stomach flips.

“Yeah?” He asks, lifting his own coffee to his mouth and taking a sip. Perhaps he should’ve taken Liam’s suggestion and put whiskey in it, after all (who knew Liam would turn out to be _that_ guy).

“You said come tell you when I was ready. And I guess, if I don’t do it now, I’ll do something stupid like back out. So here you are.”

Harry wriggles in his chair a moment, trying to get comfortable, and Louis has a fleeting worry as to how long this story actually is. He does have a job he’s supposed to be doing, after all.

“My mum was sick a lot when I was a kid. They never told me what it was, just that Mummy was ill so she’d be away for a few days. And gradually, a few days became a lot of days, and whenever I saw her- she wasn’t my mum. She didn’t look anything like her. I was four years old, and everyone had told me that mum would be fine, she’d just gone to get better, and then this woman comes home and she scares me, because I’d expected her to return exactly the same as she was when she went away.” Harry pauses to take a bite of his doughnut, and Louis remembers to swallow some of his coffee before it turns disgustingly lukewarm. “A few weeks after I turned eighteen, mum got sick again. It was bad, really bad. She had to go back to the hospital.”

“What was it?” Louis asks, because Harry’s staring at the inside of his cup like it’s replaying all of his memories at once, and asking a relevant question seems like a good way to break him out of his reverie.

“Leukaemia. She’d had a relapse, but fourteen years later. And I’d gone to see her at the hospital, and when I’d seen her, it was like all the memories of the first time came back, out of focus and fuzzy, but there. They matched up in my mind, I guess. So I panicked. I didn’t know what to do. I went home, wrote a note to my sister saying I’d be gone for a while and I’d stay with a friend, packed a bag and left.”

“You just –left?”

“Cowards’ way out.” Harry says, staring at the grain of the wood on the table. “I couldn’t deal with the fact I could lose my mum again, so I left without ever finding out if I did or didn’t.”

Louis digests this for a moment, wrapping his hands around the cup and joining the fingers together.

“Why did you leave? I mean, from here.”

Sighing, Harry looks up from the table top to somewhere behind Louis’s head. “Something you said about angels back home. And I thought ‘what if there aren’t any?’ and ‘what if I’ve just fucked up my last chances to see her?’. So I left. Couldn’t stay here and see you and know I was such a coward.”

“I don’t hate you, if that’s what you’re wondering.” Louis says, waving his hand in front of Harry’s eyes to bring the focus on to himself rather than the yellow paint behind him. “Actually, I’m pretty sure it’s an impossibility for me to hate you.”

“Well, that’s comforting.” Harry replies, trying for a smile. One corner of his mouth makes the turn upwards, but the other stays drooping.

“So, when you were at church?”

“Praying. For her. For me. I don’t know really, but I wanted to make up for this mess.”

“Did you?” Louis asks, stealing another piece of the doughnut whilst Harry’s attention is on more pressing matters.

“Make up for it?” Repeats Harry, and Louis nods. “My sister screamed a bit, and refused to talk to me. She came around, eventually, but said if I pulled something like that again then she’d weight me with stones and throw me off a waterfall.”

“Ouch.” Louis says, taking yet another piece (Harry doesn’t seem to have noticed).

“Exactly.”

“Isn’t being here right now ‘pulling something like that again?” He queries, and Harry shakes his head.

“I got express permission to be here. Said I had something important to do.”

“Well, I am highly important.” Louis agrees, and Harry sticks out his tongue.

“Watch out, Louis, or there won’t be enough room at this table for both me _and_ your ego.”

“You do hurt me.” Louis says, and Harry grins as he evidently takes delight in Louis’s sorrow. “And...your mum?”

He hadn’t wanted to mention it, because Harry has segued from the topic so well that Louis didn’t know whether it was by accident or design. But he’s supposed to be listening to all of it, so he might as well hear the uncut story.

“She’s better. Getting better, anyway. The therapy really worked this time, and the doctors think she’ll be in remission soon.”

It’s not the longest part of Harry’s story, but from Louis’s vantage point of across the table, watching how Harry’s (still goddamn huge) eyes light up and he smiles like he’s trying to outmatch the sun in a game of ‘I’m actually brighter than you’, it’s the most important part. The happily ever after where she got better.

“I’m glad, Harry. So glad.”

“So am I.” Harry says, looking down at his plate and narrowing his eyes. “Have you been eating my doughnut?”

“No?” Louis tries, and Harry raises an eyebrow like Louis could’ve at least _tried_ to be convincing.

From what Louis can gather from what Harry isn’t telling him, because Harry still likes to maintain his air of mystery, Harry will have to go back home at some point before his sister ensures he meets a watery grave. And Louis’s fine with that. He’s never visited Cheshire before, anyway.

“I guess I’ll have to meet the family when you go back, then.” He says carefully, and Harry picks up on what he’s trying to not-say.

“Did you just invite yourself over to my family home?”

Louis considers whether saying ‘No?’ again is a viable option, and decides that it is not, especially since it failed so pitifully the first time around.

“I think I did, yeah.”

“You’ll have to put up with my family. They’re unbearable.”

“I have low standards.” Louis says, swallowing the last of the coffee and taking the last piece of doughnut that Harry doesn’t bother trying to defend.

“Mine are lower.” Harry replies, staring at Louis in a way that increases his heart rate to dangerous levels and has the direct results that there’s a rush of heat to his navel.

 

“You know what?” Asks Harry, much later, when the bedroom is dark and the shadow shapes are just shapes in the dark. Louis feels pleasantly tired (he likes the sensation that he could fall asleep at any second very much).

“Nope.” He replies, reaching out with his hand in the dark. It might have connected with Harry’s jaw at some point, but it finds his hand eventually, fingers interlocking and curling around each other.

“My mum recovering. It’s a bit like her guardian angel was watching over her.”

The even sound of Harry’s breathing is a sound Louis wants to fall asleep to every night, fall and fall and fall (it’s easy now).

“If the family angel was watching over her, which angel was watching over you?”

It’s dark and Louis can only make out shapes in the black; despite this, and despite the impossibility, he knows Harry smiles, just smiles, a slow stretch of lips that always reaches his eyes.

Louis’s so close to the falling asleep point that he so very nearly misses Harry’s reply. Maybe it’s because Harry thought that Louis was, in fact, asleep. Either way, Louis does catch it, hears it and smiles before he falls.

“Hallelujah.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Edit, 2015: There's a stolen copy of this floating around on the internet. Okay, it's over on quotev. But it's not mine, it's falsely claimed as an original work, and I've reported it to quotev after my messages went ignored by the author. Happy reading! xx
> 
>  
> 
>  **Note!** Hello again! This is super, incredibly important. You've just read a story (I hope) regarding a homeless character and if this story touched you in any way, consider the impact of homelessness on real people. The Homless Period is an organization aiming to get sanitary products for homeless women in the UK- products **not supplied** by shelters. You can sign a petition to make these free for the homeless, or donate to them if you can, [here.](http://www.thehomelessperiod.com) Thank you for reading this stupidly long, but very important note- let's work towards change! :)


End file.
